"Private Security and Dispute Resolution in a Free Society"

Individual Alternative Security

Personal Security: By taking personal responsibility and security into their own hands, certain low-cost measures can be taken including better locks and doors, adequate lighting, alarm systems, self-defense weapons and training, avoiding danger, safes, tracking and disabling devices, and a wide variety of other means yet to be imagined.

Credit and Reviews: Credit and review agencies, websites, and systems are commonly used today in online transactions that take place hundreds of miles away, or even across national borders where there are no practical means of enforcement. Other means, including product reviews, credit agencies, blacklists, reputation and escrow agencies, and public records are a means of avoiding risky relationships, resolving disputes, avoiding risk, and establishing trust and reputation with potential business partners. A few examples include Google-Maps reviews, Etsy, eBay, Amazon, as well as thousands of consumer/product websites.

Collective efforts, such as a neighborhood watch or pooling resources for a neighborhood security guard, and social structures that encourage defending strangers from violence are practical non-governmental and non-commercial means.

Avoid danger and use precautions in risky situations is another means of security that nearly everyone employs today. As I said "When in downtown Detroit, it is wise to caring one or more knives, remain aware, don't bring valuables, and don't hesitate to tell people to fuck off. Lastly, if you don't like those rules, don't #$%ing go downtown."

Commercial Alternatives

Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, where the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons (the "arbitrators", "arbiters" or "arbitral tribunal"), by whose decision (the "award") they agree to be bound. It is a settlement technique in which a third party reviews the case and imposes a decision that is legally binding for both sides.

A Private Defense Agency is a conceptualized agency that provides personal protection and military defense services voluntarily through the free market. A PDA is not a private contractor of the state and is not subsidized in any way through taxation or immunities, nor does it rely on conscription and other involuntary methods. Instead, such agencies would be financed primarily through *insurance companies*, which are penalized for losses and damages, and have an incentive through competition to minimize waste and maximize quality of service.

A Dispute Resolution Organization, or DRO, is a conceptualized organization providing services such as mediation and arbitration through the private sector.

Polycentric law (or private law) is a legal structure in which providers of legal systems compete or overlap in a given jurisdiction, as opposed to monopolistic statutory law according to which there is a sole provider of law for each jurisdiction.

Lastly…

No common criminal or band of criminals who lack the pretense of legitimacy and capacity to horizontally enforce their will would be able to commit the acts of treason (Against humanity), violence, war, theft (~40% annually), suppression of freedoms, and acts of violence against humanity on a scope anywhere near comparable to that of governments.

History & Examples

Admiralty law(also referred to as maritime law) is a distinct body of law which governs maritime questions and offenses. It is a body of both domestic law governing maritime activities, and private international law governing the relationships between private entities which operate vessels on the oceans. It deals with matters including marine commerce, marine navigation, shipping, sailors, and the transportation of passengers and goods by sea. Admiralty law also covers many commercial activities, although land based or occurring wholly on land, that are maritime in character.

Lex mercatoria(from the Latin for "merchant law") is the body of commercial law used by merchants throughout Europe during the medieval period. It evolved similar to English common law as a system of custom and best practice, which was enforced through a system of merchant courts along the main trade routes. It functioned as the international law of commerce. It emphasised contractual freedom, alienability of property, while shunning legal technicalities and deciding cases ex aequo et bono. A distinct feature was the reliance by merchants on a legal system developed and administered by them. States or local authorities seldom interfered, and did not interfere a lot in internal domestic trade. Under lex mercatoria, trade flourished and states took in large amounts of taxation.

Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government "The history of Viking Age Iceland has lessons to teach. One is the importance of a decentralized enforcement power. Iceland's decentralized legal system managed to keep its leaders on a short leash for much of its history. Chieftains only had power if they could convince people to follow them, without the use of coercion. This minimized the principal-agent problem. Who wants to voluntarily follow an incompetent or evil leader? And even if an evil leader did sucker a few free farmers into following him, in the long run he would lose credibility."